The present invention relates to apparatus for severing or subdividing rod-shaped articles, particularly portions of filter rods or analogous articles which constitute or form part of smokers' products. Still more particularly, the invention relates to apparatus of the type wherein the articles to be severed are moved sideways past one or more rotating or orbiting knives which are located in planes extending at right angles to the axes of the articles.
It is known to sever portions of filter rods, e.g., filter rod portions of four times unit length, during transport form a magazine toward the assembly conveyor of a machine for the making of filter cigarettes, cigarillos or cigars. The filter rod portions are severed by a rotary disk-shaped knife so that each thereof yields two coaxial filter rod sections of two times unit length each of which is suited for assembly with two plain cigarettes of unit length of form therewith a filter cigarette of double unit length. The severing operation is rather simple if the filter rod portions consist of acetate filters surrounded by a wrapper made of cigarette paper, imitation cork or the like. Such filter rod portions are sufficiently soft to be severed by a rotary knife which can stand long periods of use and can form clean cuts across the wrappers as well as across the rod-like filter consisting of fibrous filter material. Problems arise when the filter rod portions consist of extruded profiled synthetic plastic material which exhibits little elasticity. Such material is rather hard and offers considerable resistance to severing so that the knife or knives must be driven by powerful prime movers and their cutting edges become dull after short periods of use. Moreover, the knife or knives become overheated as a result of friction between the sides of their cutting edges and the material of the filter rod portions. In many instances, the friction is high enough to cause the knife or knives to jam with resulting lengthy interruptions of operation and substantial losses in output, especially if the severing apparatus is used in a high-speed machine which can turn out up to and in excess of 4,000 smokers' products per minute.